A decade of research into top executives shows that expertise can actually severely impede performance, in two important ways. The first is overconfidence: believing that brilliance in one area leads to competence in another. The second is when deep knowledge and experience leave leaders incurious, blinkered, and vulnerable—even in their own fields. The solution is clear: Rededicate yourself to learning and growth, and rediscover just a bit of what the Buddhists call beginner’s mind. Strategies that the most successful executives use to do so fall into three buckets: challenging their own expertise, seeking out fresh ideas, and embracing experimentalism.
Expertise sounds like an unqualified good in professional contexts. Companies associate it with high performance and leadership capability and seek it when hiring for key roles. But in studying top executives over the past decade, I’ve come to understand that expertise can also severely impede performance, in two important ways.
